CAMEROUN :THE ANGLOPHONE PROBLEM: THE CONSORTIUM AND THE PEOPLE’S STRUGGLE BY ATEMNKENG.

1. I am struggling very hard to understand the meaning behind the ongoing negotiations between the colonial regime and the Consortium.
2. It is the colonial regime that has selected members of the Committee for the negotiations.
3. It is the colonial regime that may be feeding the Consortium during the meetings and perhaps even paying their transportation, with all the dangers inherent in this sponsorship by Republique.
4. In the negotiations it is still a master-servant relationship that obtains between members of the Consortium and the colonial regime. The colonial regime can decide who will talk and who will not talk; it can exclude those it does not like.
5. I understand fully well that the lawyers and teachers started the strike as dependents of Republique, calling upon it and looking up to it to resolve their problems.
6. However, the wider debate triggered by the strike and subsequent cold-blooded murders and kidnappings of Southern Cameroonians by the colonial regime have revealed beyond the shadow of a doubt that the only way the grievances of the teachers and lawyers can be permanently resolved is to withdraw decision-making on all items of the grievances and place it directly in the hands of Southern Cameroonians.
7. I guess it was for that reason that the Consortium included in its demands a return to some form of federation.
8. Nevertheless, it has further been exposed that no one-Cameroon formula or any formula in which Republique continues to maintain a controlling role over the destiny of Southern Cameroonians can ever resolve any problem for lawyers or teachers. Do lawyers agree on this at all?
9. Furthermore, our history has established that Southern Cameroonians are dealing with the most corrupt, deceitful, arrogant, evil and faithless people who believe that they are called upon to play god over Southern Cameroonians and to live in the perpetual illusion that we form one country; and it has been proven time without number that there is simply no possibility for the colonial regime to respect any agreement into which we enter with them and no way for us to enforce any understanding with them.
10. The lawyers and teachers started the strike, yes, but those who have been killed, raped, tortured, kidnapped and taken to the foreign country are not lawyers and teachers. The lawyers and teachers themselves have admitted that the strike is no longer their strike but the people’s revolution!
11. Given this background, the question then arises: what does the Consortium intend to achieve by attending the negotiations of the colonial regime? What is the Consortium’s agenda?
12. The Consortium is restricted to only teachers and lawyers. Can the fate of the Southern Cameroons be decided in isolation by this group together with Republique, sitting in a meeting whose
composition and agenda is dictated by the colonial regime and without international witnesses of any kind?
13. Perhaps we should ask ourselves this question: does the consortium believe that it is sufficiently representative of the Southern Cameroonian people to negotiate on their behalf with the colonial regime? Have the ongoing negotiations anything to do with the anticipated dialogue between the Southern Cameroons and the colonial regime or the Consortium is persisting in its view that it wants only a solution by the “master” to its own problems?
14. Let us suppose that the colonial regime grants all the demands of the Consortium, including that of federation, what happens? Does the Consortium then break off the negotiations to call for international witnesses; to include various liberation movements or what? On what grounds would it have started the negotiations when it cannot complete them? Or will the Consortium arrogate the powers to negotiate with the colonial regime all the way, and without including other liberation movements and international witnesses?
15. Suppose the colonial regime does not grant all of the demands, will the Consortium walk out of the talks? If the Consortium from the outset believed that the colonial regime will not grant all the demands, what would the talks have achieved? All that has happened is to give the colonial regime a face-saving formula before the international community to say it has engaged dialogue with the lawyers and teachers, thus once more hiding the Southern Cameroons problem!
16. I am afraid that the present actions of the Consortium will help to delay the struggle and hide the real issues from the world. By choosing to dialogue with the colonial regime, the Consortium is delaying the topical issue, which is the Southern Cameroons question, and not the lawyers and teachers problems! All Republique needs to tell the world is that the teachers and lawyers were striking, but their grievances are being addressed in the ongoing dialogue. Is this not what Biya might say in his New Year speech? Where does that leave the struggle of the people?
17. Is this not the moment for the Consortium to have allowed the Southern Cameroons question to appear at the top of any agenda of dialogue with Republique du Cameroun? I tell you, what the Consortium is doing may set us back again by many decades! At this moment no negotiations or dialogue whatever should have taken place without international witnesses and without the question of the Southern Cameroons at the top of the agenda!
18. Even if you believe that the Consortium cannot betray us because the people will not spare them that does not resolve the issue. Whatever the people do would be after the deed of betrayal! It would be too late! Are we willing to spend another half a century in bondage to the colonial regime?
19. Why would the Consortium voluntarily tempt itself by going into any negotiations at all with the colonial regime? Was it not sufficient for it to refuse all negotiations on the grounds that this is no longer a lawyers and teachers’ strike but a problem of the people?
20. We take particular note that the Consortium refused to sign the Buea Declaration II on the excuse that it could not sign without consulting its members. Can it negotiate for the Southern Cameroons without consulting the people? When it places the demand for federation on its list of demands, is that what the people want? Who would they say appointed them to demand for federation on behalf of the people, or is federation only on behalf of lawyers and teachers?
21. I smell something very wrong in this whole logic of the Consortium. There is danger ahead! There is grave danger ahead in what the Consortium is attempting to do! They are voluntarily tempting the devil!
22. There needs to be an urgent meeting between the Consortium and the Political Leaders of the Southern Cameroons. The Consortium must understand that it has placed items on its list of grievances that carry their demands beyond simply those of teachers and lawyers and on that ground alone, they cannot continue to act as if they have been appointed to represent the Southern Cameroons people in any dialogue with the colonial regime! Truly indeed, this is no more an issue of just the lawyers and teachers and they must act accordingly.
Approved by: The Secretary of StateSouthern Cameroons aka AmbazoniaGoverning Council